How to reopen an art museum: James Rondeau, Art Institute director, on the plans for, perhaps, July 1st

For big cultural institutions closed by coronavirus, reopening is in the air. The Morton Arboretum in Chicago’s western suburbs Tuesday announced it will start welcoming visitors again June 1. The Cleveland Museum of Art that same day said it will reopen June 30, reportedly the first major American art museum to do so.

With state and city officials recently outlining the rules for reopening in five separate phases, Chicago museums have a clearer view of what it might take for them to come back into public life.

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The arboretum, with an open-air, 1,700-acre campus, clearly has an advantage in allowing social distancing. But big museums, the thinking is, should be able to unlock their doors earlier than, say, theaters or music clubs because, they, too have open space — plus a clientele that can generally be trusted to follow directions.

With that in mind, and immediately following Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s announcement of the city’s guidelines Friday, I talked with James Rondeau, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the city’s iconic attractions. The conversation — about one-way galleries and public responsibilities and art-themed face masks — has been edited for space and clarity.

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Q: What did you hear that might relate to reopening in the mayor’s announcement? There didn’t seem to be anything that applied specifically to museums.

Rondeau: I was listening as well for that because we haven’t seen ourselves called out in the governor’s plan yet — or really anything in the guidelines that are in formation. So I did recognize “non-profits and other amenities” in (Lightfoot’s) description of Phase Three. But I think we’re picturing ourselves in Phase Four in this, what the mayor is calling “Revitalization.” I think that’s a safer calculation.

Q: She mentioned the ten different interest groups that they’re consulting with. Do you know if any of them are entertainment or non-profits, or are you involved in any way?

A: No. I just have a bit of an email chat going this afternoon with Richard Lariviere (Field Museum CEO) and David Mosena (Museum of Science and Industry) and with Bridget Coughlin (Shedd Aquarium). And we’re in a conversation through the Museums in the Park organization, and as far as I can see from the e-mail traffic this afternoon, none of us are yet represented, but we’re certainly going to raise our hands.

Q: So what are you, as a museum, as a sector, thinking about reopening? Where is your planning on that, I guess broadly and specifically at this point?

A: I mean, we’re forecasting more than planning, but we’re hoping that it can be something like July 1. But we are also seeing peer institutions nationally forecasting for September 1 and beyond. Obviously, these are all becoming kind of well-worn conversations. We’re also forecasting for opening and for a secondary and tertiary closure cycle. But the narrative that I’ve been trying to lead, at least internally with our staff, is being much less concerned about when as we are with what and how and why.

The Art Institute's James Rondeau talks about the donation of paintings, including the Warhol behind him, in 2015. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

Q: Interesting.

A: Right? To think about how we can define and execute (our) mission; how we understand our relevance as an art museum; how we understand our relevance as a civic thought leader; how we can channel safety and security and be a leader in rebuilding public trust in shared social spaces. Almost all of those conversations, I think, are significant and complicated, and no one has concrete answers. But I think they all kind of skirt around the “when.” You know, we will be ready when we are able.

We didn’t wait for the city or the state to tell us to close. We voluntarily closed, along with so many of our peers. But we’re super mindful that we’re not going to get ahead of any city and state guidelines when we reopen.

Q: So I assume you’re having regular in-house leadership meetings, in addition to Museums in the Park meetings, to talk about what it might look like and what you might have to do when you first reopen.

A: We have a senior leadership team and it’s also a crisis management team. I begin every day on a call with that group of six and end every day with that same group. So then, like you — like everybody in the world, I guess — I’m on a Zoom call every minute of the day in between. But we’re in constant communication. We have all-staff communication vehicles — you, know we’re well north of 650 people. But we’ve done webinars. We’ve done phone call participations. We have weekly email with all the staff. The main business of every day is somehow a communication engine, with one or 650 people and everything in between.

A: Daily calls with leadership. And we’re thinking about different aspects of it every day. We’ve got a task force on social distancing. We’ve got a task force on touchless transactions, on moving cashless, on uni-directional navigation. I mean, I could go on forever about the ways in which we’re trying to be ready. We totally redesigned our Monet exhibition (the postponed “Monet in Chicago," which was to open this weekend). It was about a third built out before we closed. We will rebuild in different dimensions of doorways, different traffic patterns. We’re not yet expert, but we took our best guesses in terms of spacing and notions of physical distancing. Some aspect of this consumes pretty much all of our conversations in one way or another.

Q: So the first people through the doors, July 1st or whenever, what might they see? How will it be a different experience?

A: When Chicagoans return to our museum, I want them to feel like we look much the same as before. I want them to return to a place that feels familiar and comfortable and safe. Obviously, we’re going to have near- and medium-term protocols that will feel a little different. It seems very likely that all staff and all visitors will be wearing masks, for example, it seems likely that we’ll have as many touchless transactions as possible. It seems likely that we’ll have a preponderance of signage with public health and safety guidelines, rather than leading with, you know, art historical knowledge or wayfinding.

One’s going to feel it in every sector of life. But my answer I want to give you is that when you get to stand in front of the “Grande Jatte” or “American Gothic” again, it will feel exactly the same as it did before the crisis.

James Rondeau on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

Q: Might there be tape on the floor saying, “You stand here" and “you stand over there” and "follow this arrow”?

A: I think some version of that. I just saw a photograph. I was actually trying to send it to some of my colleagues. It was of the Gare St. Lazare in Paris, where they demarcated in circles on the train platforms where one body can stand. And it was rather beautiful looking graphics. We’ve certainly looked at whether we do that or whether we just have a kind of Scandinavian common sense, empower people to be self-motivated and in safety. I think some combination of the two. But certainly we’re focused a lot on this notion of temporarily creating single-direction pathways through the galleries.

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But we’re figuring that out along with everybody else. And that’s part of the comfort in all of this. As critical, as frightening, as the crisis is, every time one pauses, you realize everyone in the world — almost literally — is facing the same challenge. One doesn’t feel alone, right? And trying to figure all this out, while learning from peers, waiting for city and state guidelines, talking to peer museums — all of it feels really affirming, knowing we’re not trying to solve a problem of our own making or a problem we’re in on our own.

Q: Are you thinking, starting out, you might be limiting the number of people in the building, the number of people in the galleries?

A: I see peer institutions that are forecasting 25 percent of pre-crisis attendance as a kind of a baseline. That just instinctively feels like a logical construction to begin with. But I think this is going to be less about our ability to forecast and more about our ability to respond in the moment.

When we open we will have a gigantic Monet exhibition. Twenty years ago, we would have had lines around the block. And we’ll be prepared to have very low density visitation, and we’ll be prepared to have high density. I think it’s going to be much more valuable building that capacity to respond as we go rather than the capacity now to predict.

Q: Everything now is provisional, right?

A: Yes. So we have to be ready with all of us doing what everyone’s doing and making sure we have tens of thousands of disposable masks on hand and all the things that one thinks of as the kind of concrete building blocks of readiness.

But how to manage an art museum? We’re going to be living with COVID, right? We want to be a part of figuring that out. I also have a national call of the large art museums weekly. And many of my peers have started working with epidemiologists and their engineers relative to the air-handling systems. We have super sophisticated and super filtered air handling in our museums for maintaining the condition of the galleries. And there’s a possibility that those air-handling systems really work to our advantage in terms of the virus. There’s a possibility that those systems may be an agent in dispersal. And no one knows yet.

Q: Have you been ordering masks?

A: We’re trying to. We’re looking into it. I do know we were way out in front on hand sanitizer. When the outbreak was still essentially an Asia-centric story, we went ahead and ordered massive quantities of hand sanitizer and were able to equip offices and all of our public spaces with it — at the end of January, beginning of February.

Q: This just occurred to me. If it’s too frivolous to answer, just tell me. Might the gift shop be selling masks?

A: You can’t imagine how on topic that question is. It’s not frivolous. We’ve seen peer institutions talking about it, national art museums talking about it. I don’t see aligning the brand of our collection with something associated with public health or, even more bluntly, disease prevention. I don’t want to see the “Grande Jatte” or “American Gothic” on a face mask.

But it seems very likely that for a time masks will become part of our wardrobe, the way scarves and ties and hats and gloves are. And if that is in fact the case, then having some ability to offer something that is at least brand aligned does make sense. The one bottom line we have is it’s nothing we would ever want to profit from. I’m imagining maybe just solid colors, but in a pointillist application, for cloth. Five colors for five days for the staff. That is affirmative.